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Agricultural drones are transforming rice farming in the Mekong River delta

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Re: Agricultural drones are transforming rice farming in the Mekong River delta

#71

Post by theossuary »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #68
fragmede wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are getting away with using drones as you mentioned, but the FAA's rules have had a real chilling effect on the hobby, which is a problem. Where drone piloting is a now a necessary skill for soldiers to have, and we're not encouraging the hobby, I think the next few decades aren't going to play out as well as they could.

The sort of drones the military are going to pilot in the next few decades are going to be nothing like what you can pilot as a consumer. Either way the youth is trained pretty well for electronic warfare. Just mate the drone to a video game controller or a mouse and keyboard and people will be elite immediately just like they are the first day a new video game is released to the world.

That's not true. First, many operations the US military engages in are with partner nations who only have access to commercial drones. The US military is behind them in effectively utilizing these drones (commonly DJI, which the US military can't even practice with due to the ban). Second, there's a huge push to shorten the drone procurement process, and reduce the cost of drones. This allows them to be used in harsh EW environments as one-offs, and allows the operator to be safer (the more expensive the drone, the more likely a unit will be sent to recover it if it's downed). It also allows for faster adaptation to EW and changing circumstances. The US military drones of tomorrow will look a lot like Skydio drones today, if the US can get it together and update their procurement process to the 21st century.

Interesting listen to on the topic: https://irregularwarfare.org/podcasts/drones-automation-and-...

Re: Agricultural drones are transforming rice farming in the Mekong River delta

#72

Post by Cthulhu_ »

blackoil wrote: post #40
luyu_wu wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like a DJI Agras model to me! Amusing considering the recent news regarding DJI being banned.

One reason of them being banned is they are very good and hence very popular.

The main reason is a fear - which as far as I know is unsubstantiated - that China's got backdoors in tech sold in the west. But with so many hackers and national security agencies disassembling and analyzing these things, surely they'd have found it by now?

Therefore, I wouldn't be surprised if it's more about market protection. Which doesn't make much sense to me because is there a major US drone manufacturer that can't compete with DJI right now?

Re: Agricultural drones are transforming rice farming in the Mekong River delta

#73

Post by avdlinde »

tda wrote: post #53
gumby wrote: post #32

This is so great. My long term dream is that robotics take over farming, individually plucking each weed or weevil, and metering just the right amount of water for each individual plant, so that all the crops are organic. Most of the chemicals (yes, including nitrogen fertilizers) offset labor, so when the labor is free we shouldn’t need them. And people won’t have to spend their lives in stoop-back work or exposed t…

And more, smaller, robots vs large tractors could put an end to monocultures. Monoculture is the result of optimizing for minimal human labour, not an optimization for yields. So when labour is free, mixed fields are the way to maximize profits

How about harvest? Machines are quite specialized, how do you see that working out?

Re: Agricultural drones are transforming rice farming in the Mekong River delta

#74

Post by fragmede »

dmurray wrote: post #69
fragmede wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are getting away with using drones as you mentioned, but the FAA's rules have had a real chilling effect on the hobby, which is a problem. Where drone piloting is a now a necessary skill for soldiers to have, and we're not encouraging the hobby, I think the next few decades aren't going to play out as well as they could.

The military doesn't rely heavily on skills developed by hobbyists. In the vast majority of cases, you learn to shoot a rifle or drive a tracked vehicle or weld a nuclear reactor at the military's expense, after enlisting, even though you could have learnt those skills as a hobbyist. This isn't 15th century England where every man was required to keep a longbow and cricket was banned because it distracted from archer…

Just because you can learn to fly a drone at 18 after enlisting doesn't mean you wouldn't have more skilled populace to draw from if kids started flying drones at 12, every high school had a drone racing team, and there was a competitive sport at the level of the Superbowl. It's not the 15th century, it's 2024. Even if you don't want to call it world war III just yet, there's hot conflict in two regions and cold conflict elsewhere.

Re: Agricultural drones are transforming rice farming in the Mekong River delta

#75

Post by Cthulhu_ »

6Az4Mj4D wrote: post #14

Is there any innovation in sowing rice?

What kind of innovation are you thinking about? They have transplanting machines in various sizes if that's what you're thinking about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_transplanter.

Re: Agricultural drones are transforming rice farming in the Mekong River delta

#76

Post by ammo1662 »

luyu_wu wrote: post #39
nthypes wrote: post #31

Anyone know the model name of the drone used?

Looks like a DJI Agras model to me! Amusing considering the recent news regarding DJI being banned.

I'm not sure whether they can be exported even if DJI is not banned.

Just check [0], their latest agricultural drone T60 sold in China has 60KG payload and AESA radars. (No English page provided)

They also has a T50 [1] with English introduction page.

While the air force of some countries in the world still does not have AESA, DJI already uses AESA to grow crops.

[0] https://ag.dji.com/cn/t60/specs

[1] https://ag.dji.com/t50/specs

Re: Agricultural drones are transforming rice farming in the Mekong River delta

#77

Post by jon_richards »

universa1 wrote: post #56
bfdm wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Directly, as a substitute for more labour intensive sources like manure, compost or crop rotation. Indirectly by increasing yield per acre per day.

But in the end you have to replace at least some of the nitrogen (and other nutrients) you are taking from the field in some way. And without a major shift in consumption patterns (less meat) this will mean fertilizer, as the alternatives usually lead to a much lower yield.

I was very disappointed on my last trip to Iowa to see that most farmers weren't even bothering with cover crops.

Re: Agricultural drones are transforming rice farming in the Mekong River delta

#78

Post by Cthulhu_ »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #3

I dont get it. I dont farm rice or have experience in vietnam in particular. Yet in my experience, pesticide etc has always been done thru the already existing irrigation system with a pump. Of course with advice from a technical person. The irrigation system requires an upfront investment of course but you are already going to irrigate the plot so this is is a no brainer. Therefore unless the rice grows without any…

> I dont farm rice

> I know rice is traditionally grown on flooded plains but that seems very risky

A recurring HN trope is people who don't know about a subject feel like they have to have an opinion on it anyway. Why do you believe it's very risky / in the hands of nature? Flooded plains (aka rice paddies) have been used for thousands of years; rice is a semiaquatic plant so it needs to be submerged, and paddies are designed to retain water to not be subject to the whims of nature.

Anyway, what alternative are you suggesting? Keep in mind it has to be scalable to feed billions and affordable.

Re: Agricultural drones are transforming rice farming in the Mekong River delta

#79

Post by seanmcdirmid »

gumby wrote: post #32

This is so great. My long term dream is that robotics take over farming, individually plucking each weed or weevil, and metering just the right amount of water for each individual plant, so that all the crops are organic. Most of the chemicals (yes, including nitrogen fertilizers) offset labor, so when the labor is free we shouldn’t need them. And people won’t have to spend their lives in stoop-back work or exposed t…

Robot labor isn’t free. You pay in capital costs, energy costs to run them, and ongoing maintenance costs if you use them a lot. Environmentally, these costs might be more or less than the chemicals they replace, but it isn’t am obvious comparison.

Changing farming methods along with automation might work better, like vertical farming techniques.

Re: Agricultural drones are transforming rice farming in the Mekong River delta

#80

Post by majoe »

Slightly related, but off-topic.

It's astonishing how high-tech agriculture has become without the general public noticing much of it.

I recently had a longer talk with my uncle, who is a farmer in South Germany, where he told me about the newish technology he is using:

- Milking robots: the process is entirely automated, the cows basically go inside the milking stations by themselves.

- His newer tractors are all driving GPS based, which allows him to keep the track with a precision of about 20cm. He is now able to exactly apply the amount of fertilizer, pesticides or seeds he wants to apply and plan the amounts in advance.

- A lot of data is collected for each cow and processed by an external company. This goes down to temperature measurements at each teat in the milking robot. The external company monitors each cow and plans individual treatment to prevent diseases and to optimize milk production.

- He currently plans to build a manure biogas plant, which will produce enough electricity for him and then some. I really like the approach to mainly use manure instead of harvested biomass (the economics of the two are vastly different, an interesting discussion in itself).

And that's just one farm. There are a lot of innovative things happening in agriculture.

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